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The cairn

Chapter 149: Jacobite Poetry.
By Lady Sarah Davison Nicolas
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Essays, Letters & Speeches

About This Book

A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.

Jacobite Poetry.

The following are the words to which the Jacobites sing the air of “God save the king,” which was originally a Jacobite song. Copied from an inscription cut on a glass drinking cup, at Fingarth, in the Carse of Gourie, Perthshire.

God save the King, I pray,
God bless the King, I pray,
God save the King;
Send him victorious,
Happy, and glorious,
Soon to reign over us,
God save the King!
God bless the Prince of Wales,
The true born Prince of Wales[5]
Sent us by Thee;
Grant us one favour more,
The King for to restore,
As thou hast done before,
The familie!

This tradition may remind the reader of the answer of the Jacobite Countess, to the reproach of “not praying for the King.”—“For the King, I do pray; but I do not think it necessary to tell God who is the King.”

[5] From this line it appears that these verses must have been written about the time of the rebellion, 1715, or before it.